Samsung's new smartwatch needs two charges a week, all the space on your wrist

Samsung's new smartwatch needs two charges a week, all the space on your wrist

WATCH: A quick look at Samsung's Gear S3 smartwatch

The Gear give and take

You want a smartwatch with good battery life? You're going to have to pay for it -- with wrist real estate.

Samsung's newest Gear watch, the S3, is a round, all-steel slab of a thing (though elegantly chiseled) that clocks in far thicker, larger and heavier than last year's S2 Classic. Your reward for carrying all that heft: You get a smartwatch that needs to be charged only two times a week.

Yay?

The Gear S3 Classic, looking to rent a lot of space on your wrist.

The Gear S3 can do a lot more than tell time

Of course, Samsung might say that they didn't just make this year's Gear S watch bigger than the last to increase battery life. The size allowed for Wi-Fi, GPS, cellular LTE connectivity, and a speaker for listening to music and taking calls.

The Gear S3, compatible with Android phones (and eventually iPhones, too), is among the most capable smartwatches yet.

The Gear S3 Classic (left) and Gear S3 Frontier (right).

Measuring up against the best-selling smartwatch around (Apple's)

- The S3 is about 1.5 mm thicker than the Apple Watch and has a 46 mm face compared to Watch's 38 and 42 mm options- Apple claims "18 hours" of battery life for its Watch; Samsung says S3 gets "three to four" days- Samsung's new Gear S is decidedly more water resistant than the Apple Watch, with an IP68 rating to Watch's IPX7- Unlike the S3, Apple Watch doesn't have GPS or phone-free cellular connectivity- And, of course, the Apple Watch only works with the iPhone

The Gear S3 has some depth to it.

People do want more than just great battery life -- ask Pebble

Thanks to the sudden struggles of smartwatch company Pebble, we already know that the approach opposite to what Samsung is taking -- low-function, battery champ smartwatches -- isn't necessarily a winning formula.

Of course, the smart money is on the sweet spot for this gadget type being somewhere in the middle of that and having a tiny cell phone strapped to the lower parts of your forearm -- and that's even if those wrist phones can get to better than twice-a-week charging.

What do you want most in a smartwatch?

Samsung hasn't released pricing or availability info for the Gear S3 Classic or Frontier other than to say they'll be out "before the holiday season."